Literary Salon: Michael Shapiro, Author of The Creative Spark in Conversation with Linda Watanabe McFerrin
Monday, December 2, 2019 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte
Madera || www.bookpassage.com
How about this for a stellar way to end they year! We are having an end-of-the-year Celebration and a close look at creativity with well-known Bay Area journalist, Michael Shapiro and LCW Founder, Linda Watanabe McFerrin. Please join us for wine, scintillating conversation, and a book that looks at creativity in conversations with some of the best in every business.
Creativity: how do we access it, nurture it, and sustain it? This question propelled journalist Michael Shapiro during more than a decade of interviewing many of the foremost creators of our time. In The Creative Spark: How musicians, writers, explorers, and other artists found their inner fire and followed their dreams, his just-published collection of conversations with Amy Tan, Smokey Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Lucinda Williams, Francis Ford Coppola, Lyle Lovett, David Sedaris and so many others, Shapiro reveals how these luminaries fire up their creativity and sustain it throughout their lives. Prefaced by short biographies, these interviews serve as guideposts for how each one of us can kindle our own creative sparks.
Shapiro will appear in conversation with Linda Watanabe-McFerrin, author of Navigating the Divide: Selected Poetry and Prose, a career-spanning, multi-genre collection. In profoundly personal poetry and prose, Watanabe-McFerrin’s multi-faceted collection spans spiritual and physical, thought and desire, identity and others. A renowned writing instructor, Linda will speak with Michael about the life-affirming force that is creativity.
Michael Shapiro writes about the performing arts, travel, food, books, and environmental issues for U.S. newspapers and magazines including National Geographic Traveler and American Way. For four years he wrote a column for the San Francisco Chronicle’s travel section and now covers music and the arts for The Press Democrat.
Linda Watanabe McFerrin is a poet, travel writer, novelist and contributor to numerous newspapers, magazines and anthologies.She is the author of two poetry collections and a winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. Her novel, Namako: Sea Cucumber, was named Best Book for the Teen-Age by the New York Public Library. In addition to authoring an award-winning short story collection, The Hand of Buddha, she has co-edited twelve anthologies. Her latest novel, Dead Love (Stone Bridge Press, 2009), was a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Novel.
Linda has judged the San Francisco Literary Awards, the Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and the Kiriyama Prize, served as a visiting mentor for the Loft Mentor Series and been guest faculty at the Oklahoma Arts Institute. A past NEA Panelist and juror for the Marin Literary Arts Council and the founder of Left Coast Writers, she has led workshops in Greece, France, Italy, England, Ireland, Central America, Indonesia, Spain and the United States and has mentored a long list of accomplished writers and best-selling authors toward publication.